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A BLACK
PAPER: A Look at
Voter Suppression and Hillary Clinton’s Candidacy

By Dr. Eugene Stovall

The black community has but two
types of capital: intellectual and political … and very little of
either. Black intelligence is so limited that a 2011 report said
that less than 3% of black Junior High School graduates nationwide
can read at the proficient level and less than 1% can read at the
advanced level. In higher education, black professorships and
research fellowships are held almost exclusively by assimilationists
and accomodatio- nists who are too busy pleasing their white mentors
to produce anything of value. As will be discussed, black political
capital is squandered by the feckless greed of a black leadership
that is tied to the interests of a Democratic party little concerned
with the woes of the black community. Today black people have
neither the intellectual ability nor the political will to prevent
the neo-cons’ long-term plans to suppress the black vote. In which
case, the neo-cons, who Hillary Clinton only half-heartedly opposes,
could prevent her from becoming the first woman ever to enter the
White House.

Hillary Clinton seems almost a
shoo-in to become the Democratic Party standard bearer in 2016. In
the opinion polls, Clinton holds lopsided leads over all of her
potential rivals. This lead is greatly enhanced by Clinton’s near
unanimous black support, undiminished neither by Clinton’s neo-con
sympathies nor her Republican past.

It is a tremendous advantage
for any politician seeking national office to have a solid block of
votes. And Clinton’s black support is rock solid and immune from the
type of erosion that invariably plagues long term, two-year
presidential campaigns. Hillary won’t have to worry about losing
black support because of changing international conditions nor will
she worry about losing their support because of a downturn in the
job market or because blacks are losing their homes in record
numbers. Not even the blatant murders of black children or the mass
incarceration of black men need trouble the Clinton band wagon.

Hillary Clinton won’t worry
about losing her black support for failing to deliver on campaign
promises. She doesn’t have to promise black people anything. Bill
Clinton didn’t promise or give them anything, unless you count his
Welfare Reform Act, limiting black women’s access to financial
support for their children. Hillary Clinton needn’t fear that black
politicians will chide her for suggesting that the United States
pour billions into the Ukraine but nor a cent into Oakland. Black
people won’t expect that if and when Hillary becomes president she
will put money into any black community … or reduce the monumental
black unemployment rate. That is how black politics work. Black
politicians promise nothing to their constituents and always deliver
on their promises. In fact, by not providing any relief for the
inner cities, Clinton will give black leaders a reason to call for
another “march on Washington”. On the other hand, she will insure
that black preachers receive their “faith-based payoffs.” However,
one issue that Hillary Clinton will avoid like the plague is the
epidemic drug problem infesting America’s black communities.

There is no single issue more
important for improving the lives of black Americans or the inner
city poor than the drug issue. With the number of US citizens in
prison approaching 3 million, the majority of which are black, the
drug problem is the single-most cause of the devastation devouring
our communities. But no one in the United States is more responsible
for this scourge than Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill.

When George “Daddy” Bush and
Oliver North began importing cocaine into the United States and
using the drug money to supply weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras,
they turned to Governor Bill Clinton for a place to bring the
cocaine. Clinton allowed them to land tons of cocaine at a private
airport in the Arkansas town of Mena. Not all the drug money went to
the Contras. Some drug money was funneled into national political
campaigns. And the politicians who were put in power by the
Bush-North drug cartel changed the social, economic and political
fabric of the United States and reframed international relations
around the world. So Hillary Clinton will ignore even mentioning the
word “drugs” in her upcoming campaign -- not that it would matter to
her black supporters. However, Hillary Clinton does have one worry.
One initiative supported by neo-cons in both the democratic and
republican parties could severely damage her solid support among
blacks. Not because blacks would desert her, but because ongoing
neo-con voter suppression schemes could well cost Clinton and help
her rivals. Black people will stick with Hillary Clinton, no matter
what she says, no matter what she does, however, if the republicans
are successful in their voter suppression efforts, she could
possibly lose the electoral votes that she needs to become the first
woman to enter the White House. But Clinton dare not oppose the
bipartisan voter suppression initiative too strenuously. Not only
would she risk the airing of her husband’s role in the government’s
dumping and selling tons of cocaine into the inner cities, but she
could also risk offending a significant number of powerful neo-cons
democrats. Recent events demonstrate that voter suppression is as
important to some democrats as it is to some republicans.

On Wednesday, March 5, 2014, a
handful of senate Democrats joined their Republican colleagues to
block Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s choice to head the Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division. The bipartisan coalition
blocking Obama’s Civil Rights nominee announced that they were
motivated by Debo Adegbile’s defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the
newspaper reporter and Black Panther who was convicted of the 1981
shooting of a white Philadelphia police officer. However, the real
reason for the bipartisan veto of Obama’s Civil Rights nominee was
Adegbile’s support for Voting Rights. Adegbile had argued Voting
Rights cases before the United States Supreme Court on two separate
occasions -- winning one and losing one. Moreover, Adegbile
successfully convinced the conservative high court that the voter
suppression laws passed by a number of states -- including those
states in the Deep South -- indicated a strong and undeniable
pattern of racial bias. More importantly, Adegbile persuaded the
Supreme Court that the Attorney General’s office should be involved
in protecting voting rights.

Shortly before the confirmation
vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed that the vote
against Adegbile was about voter suppression. “They’ve distorted
this man’s good name in an attempt to score points politically and
block confirmation of a faithful defender of voting rights,
which the Republicans do everything they can, not to protect.”

Twenty years earlier, another
bipartisan coalition of democrats and republicans urged Bill Clinton
to withdraw the nomination of Lani Guinier to the same position. The
Wall Street Journal began its opposition to Guinier as Assistant
Attorney General for Civil Rights by calling her one of Clinton's
"Quota Queens". Democrats, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and David
Pryor of Arkansas both urged Clinton to withdraw her nomination
because, as the senators told Clinton, Guinier did poorly in her
senate interviews. Even Democratic senator, Carole Moseley-Braun of
Illinois, the only black in the United States Senate, urged Clinton
to withdraw Guinier's nomination. Clinton gave into the pressure,
claiming that he was unfamiliar with Guinier’s writings and that he
didn't realize that his nominee advocated racial quotas. The charge
that she favored racial quotas was false. In several law review
articles, Guinier explicitly rejected the use of racial quotas. But,
like Adegbile, Guinier's nomination was opposed by Democrats and
Republicans for another reason.

Lani Guinier believed that the
voting system throughout the United States was unfair not only to
racial minorities, but also to numerical minority groups, such as
fundamentalist Christians and the Amish. Guinier had become a
leading advocate for voting rights and suggested that there were a
variety of ways to strengthen minority voting power. In her Senate
interviews, Guinier stated that, rather than advocating any single
procedure for democratizing the vote, as Civil Rights Enforcement
Chief, she would consider all alternatives after the court
found a legal violation. This meant that not only would
Guinier have the authority of the Attorney General’s office, but
also the sanction of the federal court to insure that the vote of
every American citizen counted. Just like, Debo Adegbile, Lani
Guinier represented an unacceptable obstacle to neo-con efforts to
suppress the vote. And since black people have no political clout,
both Voting Rights supporters were easily swept aside by a
bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats committed to
suppressing the black vote. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton recent
remarks, “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in
the 30s.”

***

About the Author: Eugene Stovall was born and raised in
Oakland, California. At age eighteen, he was invested into the
Knights of Peter Claver, after having attended St. Joseph’s College
Seminary where he studied for the Catholic priesthood. Stovall
graduated from Bishop O’Dowd High School and attended St. Mary’s
College, but left college to join the U.S. Air Force. In 1966, he
graduated magna cum laude from the University of California.
In 1969, using research obtained at the University of Lund in
Sweden, he obtained his master’s from the University of California
at Davis. Becoming a National Foundation Fellow in 1973, Stovall
received his Ph.D. in political theory from the Political Science
Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Stovall
has been an adjunct faculty member at USF, St. Mary’s College, San
Francisco State University and at Merritt College. His previous
novels include the 2007 IPPY Bronze Medal winner, Frank Yerby: A
Victim’s Guilt. The Hayward South County NAACP honored Stovall
for memorializing the great black novelist. His latest novel is
“Consort of the Female Pharaoh.”